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Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

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Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#341

Post by Zekio »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #337
arghwhat wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Chromium still has most, if not all, the Google integration. There are forks that try to strip Google from it, but it is a mistake to assume that Chromium is somehow better than Chrome.

Firefox by default sends all your searches to Google, and uses Google search suggestions (so sends all typed in text to Google). What other integrations, specifically please, does Chromium have with Google? Aside: do Google serve the Firefox Newtab adverts, perhaps that "feature" was added for the extra money Firefox are getting from Google?

The Newtab adverts are not served by Google IIRC and they are only matched with you data locally in your browser, you get a lot of them from Mozilla and locally on your machine they get targeted so you aren't tracked online (If my memory of the article on it is correct)

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#342

Post by mrmondo »

jaipilot747 wrote: post #300
mrmondo wrote: post #174

The fix doesn't seem to work if you've been using Firefox Beta (67.0b16), or if you then install Stable (66.0.4) and sign in to sync - all addons are still marked as "legacy" and not enabled. However, if you find each one in the store and (re-)install them - they work again and their data is back intact as expected.

Just in case someone misread this like I did, you need to reinstall each add-on. Not FF Beta itself.

Indeed, I meant re-install the addons.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#343

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sequence7 wrote: post #289
napsterbr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why am I opted-in to a Studies program in Firefox's default state? (With no explicit information about what it is) I came here to mention exactly this. I don't mind the certificate issue (as long as there is a post mortem and they learn something from it). I was wondering how my addons came back automatically (without me having to upgrade to 66.0.4) and I found out about this studies thing, which I never consented…

You could just turn off all studies in Firefox. It's a simple option: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield#w_to-opt-out-of-...

They can just flip the option or create a version of studies called "enquiries" or force a new addon that you can't remove in the next update .. 3 years ago you'd think Mozilla wouldn't ever imagine doing things like that.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#344

Post by detaro »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #343
sequence7 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just turn off all studies in Firefox. It's a simple option: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield#w_to-opt-out-of-...

They can just flip the option or create a version of studies called "enquiries" or force a new addon that you can't remove in the next update .. 3 years ago you'd think Mozilla wouldn't ever imagine doing things like that.

3 years ago, they were in the middle of deploying the current studies system.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#345

Post by pbhjpbhj »

krageon wrote: post #305
f4stjack wrote: post #261

Good move, congrats on surviving the second armag-add-on finally BUT I won't be moving from chromium until Firefox (or Mozilla) explains: - why am I opted-in to a Studies program in Firefox's default state? (With no explicit information about what it is) - what does app.normandy.enabled switch do and why is its default value is True and doesn't change to false when I explicitly state I don't want to be in the Studies…

Chromium has a working exploit (AFAIK it still is not patched) that allows third-party code to masquerade as first-party code. Unless you run a special addon[1], you are vulnerable to this. The fact that I still can't find that it's patched now tells me nothing good about the health of the ecosystem and who it is meant to serve. That should be all the reason you need to switch to Firefox, which admittedly also has hu…

You make it sound like it's a third-party RCE; but it's a cookie bypass, so it's tracking -- that's serious still [and the implementation sounds illegal to me].

The companies Instart Manager (used by cnet, tomshardware, etc., see link) and Upmanager that are doing this workaround of ublock -- are they not able to attack other browsers, only Chromium? I guess one benefit of being the biggest advertising company is that people don't want to mess with Google's stuff in case they suffer financial repercussions.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra/wiki/Sites-on-which-uBO...

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#346

Post by detaro »

tknkx wrote: post #333
AstralStorm wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies do send telemetry which is not quite the same as being spyware. You can actually check what is sent, though there's no option to more finely disable studies requiring, say, cursor, keyboard or tab name monitoring. I haven't seen any such studies though. The "remote code execution" thing is already there, it is called JavaScript. Almost every browser has it. Add-ons use it all the time. As for browser code its…

>Studies do send telemetry which is not quite the same as being spyware. How is software whose sole purpose is to send my information to a third party not spyware? >The "remote code execution" thing is already there, it is called JavaScript. Almost every browser has it. Add-ons use it all the time. JS on any webpage can't do whatever it wants, since it's restrained to the webpage itself. otoh I'm sure this "studies"…

Sensitivity of data? I'd associate "spyware" with "collects personal information", whereas studies that do not require explicit opt-in are only allowed to collect things on a level of "how many tabs are open", "has the user enabled this feature", and things like web browsing history or data derived from the history are explicitly excluded. If you don't trust Mozilla to hold that standard, then yes, you probably shouldn't use their product.

(Which apparently played part in the Mr Robot idiocy: since it didn't collect any data, it was easy to get it through the process...)

I don't like lots of stuff Mozilla is doing, but I trust them more than the alternatives to actually do what they claim privacy-wise.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#347

Post by mikro2nd »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #337
arghwhat wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Chromium still has most, if not all, the Google integration. There are forks that try to strip Google from it, but it is a mistake to assume that Chromium is somehow better than Chrome.

Firefox by default sends all your searches to Google, and uses Google search suggestions (so sends all typed in text to Google). What other integrations, specifically please, does Chromium have with Google? Aside: do Google serve the Firefox Newtab adverts, perhaps that "feature" was added for the extra money Firefox are getting from Google?

Is this still true of the default search engine is set to something other than Google? What are the relevant config keys?

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#348

Post by pbhjpbhj »

floatingatoll wrote: post #218
Karunamon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's fault is that, at the end of the day? Mozilla didn't have to structure their addon system in such a way that their (in)actions could disable the addons of every Firefox user on the planet . Mozilla did not have to abuse the studies mechanism (also on by default) to ship a workaround. Mozilla did not have to disable the option that would let me work around this problem by myself (which is going to cause me no en…

"Opt-out telemetry" creates precisely the scenario I describe, where the users who care most are least visible to Mozilla, at which point their needs would go unconsidered; no one knows they exist, how many of them there are, or why they're opting out. This remains true regardless of why , which negates your entire list of issues, replacing them with a simple question that is very difficult to answer: How could Mozil…

>no one knows they exist, how many of them there are, or why they're opting out //

They're burning half-a-billion a year of Google's money, they can afford to have an intern run filters to capture stories on HN, reddit, slashdot, ... amalgamate the main points and make them available as part of the user feedback.

Presumably many of the devs at Mozilla have been using it for the last 15 years too and also value a privacy-centric advertising-lite web.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#350

Post by pbhjpbhj »

detaro wrote: post #344
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just flip the option or create a version of studies called "enquiries" or force a new addon that you can't remove in the next update .. 3 years ago you'd think Mozilla wouldn't ever imagine doing things like that.

3 years ago, they were in the middle of deploying the current studies system.

I think it's actually 5 years ago, perhaps when the major management changes happened. My mistake.
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